A DELICATE BALANCE

As a teenager, Helena Lee discovered how make-up was a means to reconcile her Chinese heritage with a Western education, while exploring different ideals of beauty

Helena Lee on combining her Chinese heritage with contemporary British culture

Ihave been mistaken for many nationalities. In Malaysia, where my maternal ancestors lived, strangers ask if I am Japanese. On a week’s holiday in Vietnam, a guide in Hanoi leads us down the cobbled arteries of the city in search of the perfect coffee, and wonders whether I am Korean. A Chinese odyssey takes me to Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing; I know my skin is burnished from my wont to walk in the glare of the sun, and I’m wearing my customary cat-eye slick of jet-black eyeliner. The photographer I am with notices that local passers-by, who are invariably as pale as the flesh of white peaches, stare without reserve as I walk past. He is complimentary as to the reason, but of course I know better. It’s because they can’t quite place me. Or rather, they can’t quite place my face, which is clearly East Asian, but within that region, it seems, indefinable.

When I glance in the mirror I take in my features: almost imperceptible double eyelids sheltering small brown eyes; gently sloping cheeks – not angular as Western ones are; a roundness to my nose; full lips. Though one would be quick to say that my hair is black, there are nuances to this hue, and on a bright day, the sun reveals the true character of each of its strands, which collectively radiate a burnt sienna.

Racial ambiguity is sometimes the great unsaid, as many are too polite to ask where I really come from. I am ethnically Chinese but contextually British, so I am no stranger to being misplaced. Growing up, I was at pains to distance myself from the community of Cantonese or Mandarin speakers, eager to prove that I was as educated and wellversed in the cultural language of the country I lived in – not just immersing myself in the Greek myths, Enid Blyton adventure stories and the world of JRR Tolkien, but also outwardly admiring the Western physiognomy. In primary school, I coveted clouds of auburn curls, and was best friends with the girl with blonde hair, blue eyes and a milky-white complexion, who seemed to inhabit a cherubic (and physical) perfection.

It took a long time to understand that the cosmetic rules for Caucasians didn’t apply to me. During the toil of teenagehood, caught in the mire of hormones and emotion, I slavishly followed step-by-step advice from magazines – sleeping with Medusa-like plaits to force a wave in my hair, taking colour up to the browbone to achieve a rock-chick demeanour, curling my lashes and slicking on mascara so that my eyes might look bigger.

Except that the waves would quickly fall out from my intractably straight hair, neither my browbone nor eyelids proved prominent or hooded enough to hold that volume of eyeshadow (the results were clownlike rather than dramatic), and my short lashes would uncurl from the heavy wetness of mascara.

East Asian techniques didn’t quite work for me either. As a child of the Nineties, I happily subscribed to the idea of a healthy glow – artificial or otherwise – while in China, being porcelain-white was, and still is, prized (a societal ideal, evolved from the avoidance of appearing peasant-like, tanned from working in the rural hinterlands under a beating sun). Freckles are regarded as pigmentation – in fact my aunt has a practice on Harley Street that gets rid of these ‘imperfections’. I was only mildly exposed to these aspirations; in addition, as a toddler, my father would pinch out my nose to avoid it growing flat, and I was told that I had guaziǐlian – a melon-seed face – a shape, I later learnt, that was most desirable.

I sought the middle way. Little by little, I developed my own routine. There was trial, and there was error, but by the time I was 20, my period of experimentation was over. I would not deviate from what worked. I discovered the wonders of Shiseido, whose creams were light and left my skin as soft as silk. Mascara had to be waterproof, and quick to set that curl I had been at pains to put in. Both Laura Mercier’s tinted moisturiser and Giorgio Armani’s foundation gave me a layer of coverage that let my beloved freckles just show through. Liquid black eyeliner – applied with the precision of a Chinese calligrapher – became my constant companion and a shortcut to instant glamour, and I found that the tone of my skin could take almost any vibrant colour, so long as it was kept close to the lash line. A recent meeting with the Malaysian-born, London-based make-up artist Kenneth Soh, a favourite of the actress Naomie Harris, confirmed that my beauty regime instincts were right. Having worked with many East Asian models, Soh developed a talent for understanding the architecture of our faces, how best to complement those single-lidded almondshaped eyes, add luminosity to clear skin, luscious hair and well-formed lips. I marvelled at how he gave my apertures more dimension by brushing my eyelids with a warm copper shadow, edged with a strong line along the lash, and gifted my cheeks a freshness by applying blusher a little higher than I normally would.

A few years ago, I was asked by an artist if he could paint me. He counted Helena Bonham Carter, Rupert Everett and David Hare among his previous subjects, so of course I agreed and sat for him in return for two portraits that now hang on my wall. Every now and then when I gaze at them, I realise that the make-up I use is one of my defining features – that the sweep of Cleopatra-like kohl lines is as essential to my identity as the shape of my lips and the colour of my hair. And though my appearance fits neither Eastern nor Western convention, I believe I have the best of both worlds.

Liquid black eyeliner

– applied with the precision of a Chinese calligrapher

– became my constant companion